UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY "In an equitable and sympathetic manner": Alberta's Workmen's Compensation and the United Mine Workers of America, District 18's Welfare Fund by Jason Corey Devine A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY CALGARY, ALBERTA DECEMBER, 2011 © Jason Devine 2011 Library and Archives Bibliothdque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'6dition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-83415-2 Our file Notre inference ISBN: 978-0-494-83415-2 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accord^ une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant d la Biblioth&que et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduce, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lntemet, pr&ter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, d des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microfbrme, papier, 6lectronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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Canada Abstract This thesis is a study of the role of the United Mine Workers of America, District 18 in the development of Workmen's Compensation legislation in Alberta. It also an investigation into the creation of District 18's Welfare Fund in the post-war period and the fund's relationship to workers' compensation legislation. The miners initiated the movement for workers' compensation in Alberta and the first law in this regard was passed in 1908. After that year, District 18 continued to be prominent in working to improve the content and administration of the legislation as it affected miners and the Alberta working class. As a result of the insufficiency of workers' compensation, District 18 created a Welfare Fund. It was not designed to replace state-provided welfare, but to provide help to members where the law fell short. The fund, as such, was an exercise in working-class agency and mutual aid. ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I want to give thanks to my Supervisor, Dr. Nancy Janovicek, for her guidance and friendship. Her judicious approach always gave recognition of achievement and error, and underlined the need to strive for better. If not for her, not only would the present thesis not have been written, but I would never have taken up the formal study of history in the first place. For that, and more, I am eternally grateful. I have had the pleasure of not only taking a course with Dr. Elizabeth Jameson, but also of being instructed by her in many conversations. For her support and friendship, and for serving on the committee, I give my appreciation. To the other members of the History Department with whom I have had courses, I give thanks for their insight and encouragement. And to the staff of the History Department, above all Brenda Oslawsky, I give thanks for all the help and putting up with my myriad questions. I also want to express my gratitude to Dr. John R. Graham for sitting on the examining committee. In the course of my research the help of one University of Calgary librarian in particular, Dani Pahulje, was irreplaceable. She helped me understand the state of government archiving in Alberta and was crucial in helping to locate the reports of various commissions. I am very thankful for her aid. Besides the hours spent reading legislation and newspapers on microfilm, the bulk of my research took place in the Glenbow Museum Archives. I heartily thank the staff for all their assistance. Last, but not least, I want to thank my mother for all her loving support. iii I dedicate this study to my best friend and wife, Bonnie Devine, and to our children: Connor, William, Matthew, and Jayden. Their love, support, and patience has been a constant source of strength. > iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Dedication iv Table of Contents v Epigraph vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2: THE ROOTS OF MILITANCY 14 CHAPTER 3: THE MINERS AND WORKERS' COMPENSATION 33 CHAPTER 4: CREATING THE WELFARE FUND 68 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 90 BIBLIOGRAPHY 97 v Miners have always had difficulty in comprehending the simplest of propositions as to the market-regulation of wages, and have clung tenaciously to unscientific notions such as 'justice' and 'fair play'. E.P. Thompson, "A Special Case" vi 1 Chapter 1: Introduction This thesis is a study of the development of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), District 18's Welfare Fund and its relationship to the Workmen's Compensation in Alberta. The UMWA-D18's Welfare Fund was established in 1946-47 through an agreement between the union and various coal operators. The explicit reason for setting up the welfare fund for injured workers was to address the weaknesses in the contemporary Workmen's Compensation legislation; the union did not aim to replace benefits with the fund. In the words of the union, it was not the intention of the Welfare Fund to "substitute or take the place of any Federal or Provincial Government agency."11 argue that Workmen's Compensation was an element in the development of the capitalist state through its developing regime of industrial legality, and hence a tool utilised to regulate the labour-capital relationship basic to capitalist societies. This limited the impact of the legislation on the Alberta working class in general and the UMWA-D18 more specifically. Regardless of the legislation's structural function, miners still faced some of the most dangerous working conditions in Alberta. Thus the union consistently led the fight to improve the content of workers' compensation legislation and to ensure that it would "be administered in an equitable and sympathetic manner."2 Indeed, they initiated the movement in Alberta that culminated with the passing of the first workers' compensation act in 1908. Due to the legislation's nature as a class-compromise and District 18's limited successes, it still fell short of the demands and needs of working people. This thesis argues then, that District 18's Welfare Fund represented an exercise in agency and mutual aid on the part of the miners, as well as a response to political and economic conditions of post­ 1 Glenbow Museum Archives, United Mine Workers of America, District 18 [hereinafter GMA, UMWA- D18] fonds, M-5889-3089, "Payment of Benefits From Welfare Fund of District 18, United Mine Workers of America, 7 October 1947," 6. 2 GMA, UMWA-D18 fonds, M-6000-495, "Memorandum submitted to the Special Committee appointed by the Alberta Legislature for the purpose of receiving representations and recommendations as to the operations of the Workmen's Compensation (Accident Fund) Act," 1-2. 2 war capitalism. In developing an understanding of working-class agency, this thesis builds on the scholarship of historian Alan Derickson. As he has noted in the American context, "miners were not merely victims of hazardous technology," nor were they "merely the passive beneficiaries or victims of policy."3 Rather, miners engaged in a spectrum of conflicts: broad struggles to influence public health policy for all workers, to more specific fights to improve the conditions in the mines.4 This view thus avoids the conspiratorial view of the state which, while critiquing the capitalist state, ends up over-estimating its power and emphasising structure at the expense of agency.5 While the state certainly shaped the lives of working people, such power was conditional and limited; workers could and did contest the power of the state in the pursuit of their own interests. As E. P. Thompson succinctly put it in his discussion of the origin of the English working class, "The working class made itself as much as it was made."6 Other aspects of working-class agency are the traditions of self-help and mutualism. These traditions have developed in response to the exigencies and conditions of capital accumulation within class-divided capitalist societies. In Derickson's words "workers' initiatives for health reform were inextricably embedded in a larger matrix of conflicts between labor and capital."7 Labour and capital are the two basic classes of capitalism. In economic historian David Leadbeater's lucid definition "the capitalist class are the owners of capital, who exist by virtue of their private appropriation of surplus value (or profits)."8 3 Alan Derickson, Workers Health', Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), xi; Alan Derickson, "Down Solid: The Origins and Development of the Black Lung Insurgency," Journal of Public Health Policy 4,1 (Mar., 1983): 25.